Her Royal Highness Woman Part 15

The French language expresses the difference to a nicety. The word as an adjective is complimentary, but certainly not as a noun. _Elle est coquette_ means 'she dresses very elegantly, and has very winning manners,' whereas _C'est une coquette_ means 'she is a coquette,' that is to say, 'she tries to fascinate for the mere sake of fascinating.'

The coquette plays on man's vanity and makes a fool of him. The flirt displays her accomplishments and personal charms either to make you have a pleasant time with her, or, when more serious, to lead you on to an offer of marriage, which she will honestly accept, often with the best results for yourself.

It is only when you say of a woman that she is a 'desperate flirt' that you may come to the conclusion that she is a coquette. Of course, when the flirt is a married woman, she is a coquette; but when she is a young girl, I would call her a very harmless person. On the other hand, in opposition to that epithet of harmless, the adjective that is most commonly coupled with the word 'coquette' is not 'harmless,' but 'heartless.'

The word 'flirt' comes from the French _fleureter_, which means to go from flower to flower, to touch lightly; but although the word is of French origin, the thing itself is not French. Flirtation is a pastime which is most essentially English. We do not flirt in France; we are more serious than that in love-affairs. After all, flirtation is trifling with love, and that game would be a dangerous one to play with a Frenchman. A woman who flirts would pa.s.s in France for giddy, if not worse. She knows her countryman well, and is aware what she would expose herself to if she flirted with him.

The English girl in flirting does not play with fire. Englishmen are reserved, cold. The customs of the country grant liberty to the women, and they accept flirtation for what it is worth. The worst they might say of a girl who flirted with them would be, 'She is an awful flirt,'

with a mixed expression of pity and contempt. An English girl who has had a good time at a party, a picnic, a ball, can say, 'I have had such a flirtation!' Why, she could say that to her own mother, and if that mother was still fairly young and good-looking, she might answer, 'And so have I.'

I take the American woman to be too intelligent--I had almost said too intellectual--to enjoy that childish pastime.

I hate the coquette and somewhat pity, if not despise, the flirt. I love straightforwardness. I admire that woman who blooms in the shade, who is earnest in her affections, and who waits until she is in love to allow the curtain to rise; then who honestly, devotedly, straightforwardly, goes through the whole comedy.

In everything I hate imitations. If I cannot get the real article, I do without it.

CHAPTER x.x.xV

WHAT IS A PERFECT LADY?

'Am I the man as wants a gentleman to drive him?'--How can you tell a lady?--A lady is a woman who adds to the virtues of a woman the qualities of a gentleman.

In a clever article, Lady Violet Greville recently asked, 'What is a lady?'

A friend of mine was once asked in New York by a coachman if he was 'the man as wanted a gentleman to drive him.'

I was myself told once by a negro hotel-porter, whom I had asked a question about some baggage of mine, to apply 'to that gen'l'man over there'--another negro porter.

A lady friend of mine who visits the poor of her district once called at a tenement house to inquire after a poor woman who was ill. The woman who answered the door shouted to someone upstairs: 'Will you tell the lady on the second floor that a young person from the district has called to see her?'

A lady acquaintance, who once happened to be alone in her home with a maid who was ill, out of consideration for that girl, went herself to open the door to a friend she had seen go up the steps of her house, so as to save the maid the trouble of coming upstairs. The following day that maid told a servant next door that 'her mistress was no lady,' as she answered her door herself.

'What is a lady?' asks Lady Violet Greville.

Well, it is hard to tell in these democratic days, when every cla.s.s strives to ape the others above, when all people are equal to their superiors and superior to their equals.

With the modern extravagance in dress, the boisterous hats, the outrageously _decollete_ dresses in restaurants and other public places, the cigarette-smoking, the card-playing for high stakes, and what not, I shall feel inclined to answer: 'You can tell a lady by the efforts she makes to be taken for--anything but a lady.'

Every cla.s.s of society has its own definition of a lady. To the inhabitants of the slums it is a woman who stops her nose when in contact with them; to servants, it is one who does not do a stroke of work in her house, pays their wages regularly, throws at them her left-off clothes, and treats them like dirt; to tradespeople, it is one who pays cash for what she buys; for dressmakers and milliners, it is a woman who never bargains, and is known never to wear her gowns and hats more than half a dozen times.

What is that new supreme desire to pa.s.s for a lady?

'It proceeds purely,' said Lady Violet Greville, 'from a wish to imitate; it is vulgarity pure and simple.

'It is the aspiration after gentility, the longing to appear what we are not, the desire of the fly for the dinner-lamp.

'It is the natural consequence of the religion of the Anglo-Saxon race--make-believe.

'A real lady's existence,' continues her ladyship, 'seems to outsiders to be all sweetness, and pa.s.sed in a land of milk and honey; whereas, in reality, could her poor, crawling admirers realize it, the modern lady's life is a compound of hard work, exhausting excitement, anxious ease, and infinite disillusion. To begin with, she is often poorer than her prosperous neighbour, compelled to practise petty and galling economies, travel second cla.s.s, wear cleaned gloves, and spend unpleasant moments in street-cars and omnibuses. It is the vulgar _nouveaux riches_ who own the carriages, the horses, the jewels, and the money.'

Yet the vulgar rich may be as lavish as they please, may throw gold out of the windows, give a small fortune for their horses and carriages, they have not enough money to buy what that lady possesses, her delicacy and refinement. Even their servants know that, for they can take the measure of the mushroom n.o.bility to a T.

In a few years more, no doubt, the word 'lady,' entirely divested of the original meaning, far away buried in the mists of time, will merely be the equivalent of the feminine gender, the female of the male, and then the gentler bred and wiser of the s.e.x will exult in bravely calling themselves women. And they will be right. 'A perfect woman'

sounds to my ears far more sweetly than 'a perfect lady.' There is no misunderstanding about the former. 'I am not an angel,' says an _ingenue_ to her _fiance_ in some French play, the name of which now escapes me; 'don't expect too much from me. I am only a woman.' A woman--only a woman. Heavens! that is good enough for anybody!

Lady Violet Greville concludes her clever article by a beautiful definition of a lady:

'The real lady settles her debts, does not forget her liabilities, would as soon cheat as commit murder, and actually considers an engagement a binding duty. She has a soft voice and a pleasant manner; she is the daughter of evolution and the survival of the fittest. If she has nerves, she does not show them. She has courage of the finest sort, the courage of her opinions and the moral courage to deny herself.'

I feel almost inclined to draw myself up, and say of the real lady: 'In short, she possesses all the qualities that make up a gentleman.'

Tell me, ladies, if this is not just like a man.

CHAPTER x.x.xVI

MAMMIES AND GRANNIES

Cupboard love--Every kind of love is more or less selfish except maternal love--Maternal love over-rated--If you never had a grannie, do get one--Reminiscences of grannies--A sacrifice-- Grannies are not at all prejudiced in favour of their grandchildren.

Every kind of love is more or less cupboard love. I mean to say that love, whatever form it may a.s.sume, requires, or, at any rate, expects, some equivalent for it in return in the shape of affection, happiness, or pleasure. I only make one exception in favour of maternal love. The most loving sweetheart, husband, wife, or child expects to be loved, almost demands it. The loving mother expects nothing, demands nothing.

A mother will love her child, however bad that child may be, however unloving and ungrateful, whatever unhappiness and even sorrow he or she may cause to her. A mother will love and bless a child whom the whole world has condemned. A mother's love and forgiveness will follow a child to the scaffold. There is no limit to it. It is infinite.

Maternal love, far above others, is the very sentiment that keeps us in touch with heaven. It is the only holy love.

And that love is so inborn in woman that you see it already written on the face of the little girl who plays with her doll. It is so inborn in woman that I find something incongruous in such a remark as, 'She was a good and loving mother!' All mothers are good and loving. All rules have exceptions, but this one has none.

Therefore it is no extraordinary testimonial for a woman to be fond of her children, because all mothers are fond of their children and good to them, even the fiercest and cruellest of animals. The feeling is given to them by Nature. We all profit by it, we are all happier for it. For being able to dispense maternal love, woman is to be admired and blessed, but not congratulated. A child is part and parcel of a mother. In loving her child, a woman loves part of herself. It is not selfishness, but, somehow, a little self-love. In her love for her child, whether returned or not, she finds happiness.

But for disinterestedness, never mind mammie: give me grannie's love.

G.o.d ought to spare grandmammas; they never ought to die, the dear, lovely grannies!

'Haven't you a grandma?' once asked a little boy of another. 'No? Well, you should get one!' True, no child should be without one.

Victor Hugo said he submitted to one tyranny only, that of children.

The author of 'The Art of being Grandfather' was right: that tyranny ought not only to be submitted to, but proclaimed. And who better than a grandmother will submit to the tyranny of a child? The sacrifices they will be capable of are superhuman, epic. I know one who charms away the last days of her life by a dainty little supper of biscuit and cream-cheese brought to her every day. She never now comes down in the evening, and that frugal repast is taken up to her when dinner is about over.

Her little granddaughter once came up to her room crying bitterly. She was in disgrace, and had been sent away from table before the appearance of the pudding.